


kodak moment

by GARMADON



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003)
Genre: M/M, can ANYONE else make content about this I know you all like leo/usa but, the other ones have tc/e/s/t in them so this is the first real don/usagi fic thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-19 00:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18956167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GARMADON/pseuds/GARMADON
Summary: I needed to purify the tag by putting non-t/c/e/s/t in it





	kodak moment

**Author's Note:**

> bro I still mess up the pacing in EVERYTHING die...  
> Shoutout to Todd for making me finish I wrote this in a series of sentence fragments over almost 3 months of trying NOT to finish it so they really made a difference

Donatello vaugely quashed the scream that threatened to rise up in his chest and into the lab where he half-stood spine-groaningly hunched over an impossibly, frustratingly,  _ annoyingly _ unemployed workbench, head in his hands. This certainly wasn’t the first time his well of ideas had run dry, but usually someone would burst in an hour or a day later and announce that something  _ terrible _ had happened and they needed some absurd scientific feat  _ right now _ or the city would EXPLODE! Or whatever. But after dealing with basically every relevant competent villain in the galaxy, there just weren’t that many problems left to solve. World hunger, maybe. But that was a human problem anyway- in any case, it was almost a pity that there was no one trying to kill everyone or turn them into slugs. The others adjusted to victory rather well, for the most part: Leonardo was obviously relieved by the lack of pressure, taking the time to focus on perfecting his ninjutsu at his own pace, Raphael spent all his time with Casey busting street punks on their sickening eternal honeymoon, and Michelangelo had dedicated himself to his video games- not that that was any different from what he did before. Donatello, however, was stuck jumping on whatever random home improvement projects popped into his head to chase away the miserable boredom in between. It was only a matter of time before-

Before a small glowing wormhole materialised off to the side of the room, apparently. Donatello straightened up, a hand straying to a welding torch that had been dumped on the workbench. As soon as he could blink, though, the glow vanished, to be replaced by a somewhat diminutive, gently smiling figure with ears near as long as the two swords at his belt.

“Usagi!” Trying not to act like he had been about turn his otherworldly friend into roast rabbit, Donatello went to take the samurai’s outstretched hand. “What brings you all the way to our world?”

Usagi beamed, and the turtle suddenly felt heir world were  _ much _ too far apart indeed. “It has been too long! Nothing special, exactly, my own world has just been rather quiet of late, so I thought I would check in on my old friends."

Almost disappointed there was no horrifying interdimensional monster or some such to deal with, Donatello turned for the door of his lab. “I’ll tell Leo you’re here.”

“Please. It seems every time I meet you, there are too many blades for a decent conversation.” Usagi cast his eyes about the room for a visitor’s chair, not that it was to be any use- the resident scientist was not a fan of people coming into his lab uninvited, and was certainly not about to encourage them to make themselves at home. 

For a second Donatello was taken off guard by such basic politeness- his brothers tended to just sit wherever, whenever, to his frequent irritation. In a flash of recollection, he hurriedly pulled the blanket off a bench at the side of the room masquerading as a cot, shoving it into a drawer. The lab's 'bed’ was entirely a placebo to ease his brother's constant nagging about how little the erratic scientist slept (or even went to his room), but it still made the place feel a little more personal. “Uh, here. Sorry about, you know,” he trailed off, gesturing to the room at large, “all this. I still haven't cleaned up after the last Mikey attack.” A half-true but incredibly plausible excuse to head off anything his visitor may have said about the makeshift cot, or the rather haphazard state of the room in general.

The samurai smiled at the mention of the rambunctious youngest turtle and took his seat. Donatello suddenly felt unbearably criminal for the lack of  refreshments- not like his lab was exactly a tourist destination, but- “Don't trouble yourself.” Usagi said, seemingly reading his mind. He was so gracious it was  _ unfair _ . 

He smiled again, a bigger one that his furry facial structure reflected in his eyes with a sort of squint, and Donatello fumbled the screw he had picked up, missing a beat in the supposedly already absent-minded fidgeting that started the moment he wasn't holding anything else. It was totally disarming, and the moment Usagi went on to ask about recent events he found himself actually  _ talking  _ with the ronin about things, instead of just offering the brusque siri overview usually demanded of him. With how mind-numbingly boring things had been, the turtle had expected his mind to be- well, numbed. But just being with the ronin was restarting that spark in his brain, and before he knew it they were totally off-topic, how-dos and and-yous exchanged for a heated debate on some of the finer points of vehicular modification. Donatello monopolised both sides of the argument, but Usagi was not the least bit put off by the display. Though the rabbit may not have made the franly unreasonable leap to actually caring about things like the exact material of the turtle taxi's upholstery, he seemed to enjoy hearing his eccentric friend's thoughts, even on the dumber points he was apparently equally passionate about. 

Without even being aware of it, Usagi had ended up totally banishing every bit of boredom and irritation that had seeped into the lab over the past month, and when a ramble on weapon maintenance finally brought the ronin up to a similar level of animation, Donatello almost grabbed his shell-cell and snapped a photo. The whole event was perfect- a kodak moment, he found himself thinking. Usagi grabbed his hand excitedly, caught up in a tale of his own, and the urge skipped straight from kodak to time-stop. 

Apparently, his brain had assumed he went ahead with the freeze and shut down activity, because a couple seconds later he found he had zoned out and been pulled back in only by Usagi pausing his story to address him directly.

“I take it Gen’s antics are more enthralling than I thought.” Usagi said with a slight chuckle. 

Mentally shooting a general thanks out to whatever the utroms had for a god that reptiles didn’t blush, the turtle rushed to figure out what he was supposed to say. “Oh! Um, it’s not that-” considering the tone, and the fact that he had only been half listening, and the way the rabbit was smiling at him, shifting so both paws could hold one of his hands- Donatello laughed, once, at the blindness he had so often been mocked for, gave Usagi a peck on the lips and rolled his eyes at the wave of giggles that rushed in to fill the space where all the nervous tension had been a second earlier. 

**Author's Note:**

> (this is the special bonus ending also due to Todd)  
> And then they KISSED   
> TWO TIMES  
> “Gay rights.” Said Donatello.   
> “Gay rights?” Usagi asked. He did live in feudal japan, after all. “Oh! Gay rights!”


End file.
